Tuesday Morning

Hybridity

What is it?

What does it look like in my personal life?

How is it seen in my academic pathway?

Where have we seen it in the texts that we have read?

Film: Birth of the Dragon (2017)

This film….. yikes. I liked how one of my classmates put it, that the movie was framed so that a white guy created all the action and solutions in the story. He was the one who cared enough to bring justice to the woman character and as a white savior freed all the girls. If he wasn’t there, no one in the Chinatown community would have stepped in. Also the decision of the white guy to move from Sifu Lee to Sifu Wong as a representation of people going to what is “more authentically Asian” instead of validating what APIA people have worked hard to create. Very problematic.

Bruce Lee is a embodiment of interdisciplinary studies because his philosophy is to take what is useful and develop from there.

The Hapa Project! Super cool.

1960’s integral to pop culture because it was a time of cultural shift.

Writing Workshop

Academic statement free write/draft. During writing this I thought, wow, if I had Kris or another professor watching me while I worked on an assignment, I would be so much more efficient.

Wendy Bishop “Acts of Revision”

This project is an opportunity to build my own skills, not impress anyone or please the professor.

Margaret Walker “Willing to Pay the Price”

Paper Bullets by Kip Fulbeck

I feel like once I came to the end of the book I started to see a more full picture of who (the character) Kip was and how he was growing into his identity and exploring what it means to be Kip. Although I still do not think there had to be all those sex scenes and objectification of women, I have more of an understanding of how that was part of his process and in the end, that is not where he ended up. I am still a little confused with his last relationship because it seemed like it was an unhealthy relationship still with him glorifying/idolizing her and her needing validation from men but the way it was written made it seem like it was okay because it was this totally transformational love story. Also it could have been representing his art, the ocean, etc. as we talked about in seminar. This book was definitely very layered and complex which made it very real.

I really value how Kip writes about his process having to figure out what it meant for him to be mixed race and this book showed the many coming of age moments in that process. The part in the end of the book where Kip is being a mentor for kids who are rough around the edges and the teenager he is working with says that the best thing that people could say to him would be “I totally respect both your parents cultures” (pg 244).

When I was reading this, I can’t remember what point in the book, I stopped and thought how this book would be valuable for all people not only hapa, mixed race, or APIA people which it is probably marketed for. In my children’s literature course I read about how a lot of libraries are sectioned off into the multicultural section and that books with non white characters are generally made for non white readers when in fact it is so important for all people to read them and everyone has so much to gain.

Last Seminar 😮

  • Finger and moon metaphor as the finger is the little decisions and events that lead to the big picture.
  • Control power with peace, dragon and tiger, Ming Dynasty and Ching Dynasty
  • Paper bullets and fictional autobiography are both oxymorons
  • What is true? Does it even matter? Fictional to weave a greater meaning out of the story. – distort the truth to reach a higher truth
  • Every pop culture reference was intentional, would take a lot of time to go through them all.
  • 1970’s was the era for the pop culture references which was the “me generation” after the coming together of the previous generations.
  • Be aware of the framework that is laid out in the introduction of a book